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May 20, 2008

WRITERS' UNION DEPLORES TORONTO DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD'S DECISION TO REMOVE EXTRAORDINARY EVIL, A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE FROM READING LIST

The Toronto District School Board
5050 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 5N8

communications@tdsb.on.ca

May 20, 2008

Dear Trustees and staff of the TDSB,

The Writers' Union of Canada strongly endorses Barbara Coloroso’s appeal of your decision to remove her work, Extraordinary Evil, a Brief History of Genocide from your reading list. We are surprised that, as educators, you are somewhat slow at learning lessons. Have you already forgotten the outrage created amongst parents, educators, librarians and writers when Three Wishes was removed from the Silver Birch award list, following a complaint from the Canadian Jewish Congress? You even ignored a committee recommendation to retain Three Wishes on a limited basis.

You claim your reason for banning the book is that Ms. Coloroso is not a professional historian. This feels like a thinly disguised attempt to hide the truth that you have been pressured into banning her book by a politically motivated interest group. Ms. Coloroso is a highly respected and well-established professional writer and public speaker on social justice and child raising; her books are published around the world. Her book on genocide is meticulously researched and extremely appropriate for a course such as yours on the Holocaust.

It is completely unacceptable for those responsible for educating the citizens of tomorrow to remove valuable titles every time an interest group brings forth a complaint. If so, your library shelves would be bare indeed. As several Letters to the Editor emphasized in May 19th’s Globe and Mail, books should be judged on their contribution to the discussion of issues such as genocide.

We encourage you to restore Extraordinary Evil, a Brief History of Genocide to your reading list, and make a more concerted effort in the future to put the interests of your students ahead of the political agendas of narrow interest groups.

As Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, I will be contacting board executive Gerry Connely this week to further discuss this issue, as we remain distressed and unsatisfied by the board's reasons for excluding a book that is a valuable contribution to the discussion of man's inhumanity to man.

Sincerely,

Susan Swan
Chair, The Writers’ Union of Canada